Review: Sony Ericsson W600

Contacts can hold quite a bit of data, so the W600 displays a person's information over several tabs. It can hold 4 phone numbers, a fax number, several email address, a web address, 2 street addresses and even a birthday. In addition there is a tab to set a custom ringtone, a picture for photo caller ID and a voice dial command. Voice dialing is now set by individual phone number and not by contact name and then type of phone.

There is no speaker independent voice recognition, and voice commands for numbers and other functions must be recorded in a quiet room. The phone will warn you if there is too much background noise and will tell you to try again later. Once recorded, voice dialing works about 70% of the time.

All calling functions work as expected. In calls, the left soft key activates the speakerphone while the right brings up all other in-call options. Sony Ericsson has updated the recent calls list (accessible by hitting the left softkey on the home screen) so it no longer puts the most recent outgoing call at the top of the list. Instead it displays the most recent call, period. This is how other manufacturers are now handling the recent calls list as well. Since typically you need to redial a number soon after you previously called it, this works as redial when you need that function the most. In cases where you've received calls in-between, you'll have to scroll down to redial the numbers. The recent calls list also features separate tabs you can thumb through for incoming, outgoing and missed calls.